


Mononoke-Ikki (or The Shadow Men)

by Deputy Buck (annoying_kuriboh)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Animal Injury & Death, Canon Queer Relationship, Dealing With Trauma, Depression, Eating Disorders, Edo Period, F/F, F/M, Ghosts, Ghouls, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inspired by Princess Mononoke, Japanese Character(s), Japanese Culture, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Made Up History, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Permanent Injury, Political Intrigue, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer Themes, Romani Character, Romanian, Romanian Folklore, Sengoku era japan, Slight horror, Were-Creatures, animal gods - Freeform, creepy imagery, i wish I could describe this as dappermouth's art put in literature but i'm not sure i got there, systemic injustice, this is based both on Romanian and Japanese history and compiles ethnic groups from both countries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28046112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annoying_kuriboh/pseuds/Deputy%20Buck
Summary: The world turns cold as winter comes; the year is 1598, the Rūman Lands are divided in the wake of wars and groups of Ikki uprising. Then there's the Mononoke-Ikki, they're not even human, or so it's said; it's said they cannot be beaten, and their goals are obscured, at worst absurd, where-ever they go there's another story. And their leader, said to go by Zasshu, is what Kato Isamu, one of the last members of the once great Fujiwara clan, hopes to slay.This is about identity and trauma, it's about queerness and healing, about finding and making peace with oneself, the uncertainty and inevitability of change.
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. Eve

There’s only the screech of an owl to be heard. And if the stories of the grandparents were to be believed it foretold death.

And maybe Isamu wanted to die – at least as he laid his head down to get some shut-eye, he thought he’d be better off dead. The other three that set out with him were killed; Isamu was left alive for some reason. But he knew that reason and just didn’t want to think about it. Maybe he’ll freeze to death: he didn’t bother to make a fire and it was getting cold; should be snowing anytime soon.

He exhales and it comes out as a puff of smoke. One last scan of the tree line; he knew what hunted them and it still didn’t leave, but Isamu felt curiosity rather than fear.

The Mononoke-Ikki should have been just another bunch of poorly organized, poorly equipped bands of peasants, like any other Ikki, but the bastards caused such chaos in the neighboring country that they forced the governing Asano clan to surrender – at least that’s what he heard. Claims weren’t without merit though; if this was their work then the men they murdered beside Isamu were murdered quick and effectively: a bullet to the skull and it was over. It had to be them; whatever that man they called a leader was, whatever name he got by: Zasshu, Daken or something other, he had a presence, like some ghost who was bound to this Earth, like a day of mourning, that man reeked of grief.

It was so pungent at times, it was stinging his nostrils, crawling into his bones and pricking up the hairs on his skin, just as it did now. And maybe Isamu should be wise and kill this Zasshu, return as some hero, but that for what. Existence, his own at least, was hollow and meaningless and sometimes it felt like he was raised barely to be human; in that regard, maybe he had more in common with this man that haunted him.

Isamu should just close his eyes and die in his sleep; bones rattled as he felt him near and a terrible dread started growing and air started to become scarce.

“Promise me something, Isamu-” he heard the voice of a friend now gone. “Promise me,” he said, that night when Isamu saw him waist deep in the river by his home “they’ll never use you.” And no matter what Isamu did or how he fought his feet were stuck in the mud as he watched the man walked deeper and deeper in and-

No. Gods no, not this again; he couldn’t breathe.

For that one brief moment he got stuck in the past, in the mud, everything returned at once; arms shook as he tried to clutch his clothing, pull it away for air. He couldn’t breathe. The splashing of the water, the movement of the currents as it got swept away, all vivid, drowning out everything else but the sound of his own heartbeat. The drumming of his heart in his chest, faster and faster until he hoped for it to stop. He couldn’t breathe. The tremor of his body and it writhed to curl into a ball; there was a sudden pain, not sharp but sore as muscles panicked over what to do. He couldn’t breathe; was that how suffocating felt like?

But somehow Isamu’s hoisted up by foreign arms; he’s sitting now and he can’t hear the ripple of the river by his home. He fights to pull away, breathing still scarce but now far less important than whoever seemed to try to rescue him.

“Get away from me!” Isamu pulls out his knife pointing it only vaguely in the direction of the other.

It’s quiet a moment, heart still galloping between his ribs and this stranger in front of him. He first sees the hair: red; all he ever knew was black. Then the features of the face register: sunken, pale and weathered, scars littering the left side of the face from a nick on the forehead to the cheeks to a lip almost cut in two near the corner.

“Who are you?” Isamu asks, but that was the Zasshu.

“Miyamoto Nagato. You might have heard of me as the Zas-”

He should kill him and the motion comes so swiftly that the spike of pain that surges up his arm makes Isamu shrivel back. Did the man cut him before he had any time to act?...

His eyes peel back at the sight: the blade of his knife stuck through the Zasshu’s left palm to the other side; that arm trembled as the wound bled and somehow his own hand, uninjured, was subjected to the same pain. Isamu grabbed his hand to try and stop the throbbing.

“I’m sorry.” The Zasshu says. “I’m not here to harm you.”

“You don’t seem to be wanting to do me any favors either.” Isamu draws further away, looking again at the man’s hand, how he almost didn’t mind it and Isamu in his great wisdom all but asked him if he’s alright, before furrowing his eyebrows: “What do you want with me?”

And there were more words bubbling up on his tongue, but the Zasshu spoke first: “I was hoping to talk to you.”

Isamu draws in a large inhale, shifting his gaze once more to the knife still stuck in the man’s palm; the Zasshu notices and with some sort of dignity that seemed ceremonial he pulls the blade out, shimmying it from between his bones. It hurt: Isamu held onto his own hand, pushing it down onto his thigh, the man too lifted lips up in a snarl as if struggling not to give out a pained scream. Knife is tossed to the side.

“Talk about what?”

“The Mononoke-Ikki.” His voice is clear, whatever pain singed it came out only as a low rumble; this man must have been injured countless times before and accounting for the way he decided to stop that knife he wondered how many of those were self-inflicted. “Why were you tracking us?” The Zasshu’s voice takes him out of his thoughts.

“You destabilized Orutakantori. You are a threat.”

“Only to those who hold power.” Isamu furrows his eyebrows further. “Is that why they sent _you?_ ” The Zasshu questions further, and he’s feeling compelled to jump at the man’s throat: he was thin enough that his hands might be enough to snap it in two.

“Is that why you left _me_ alive?” Isamu decided to bark back. Was it because he ‘saw’ how others couldn’t see? Vivid and intense, all around him; the world breathed and pulsed and he learned to assume its intentions – most of the times he guessed right. And now as pain snaked up his arm from a wound that wasn’t his own he seems to have learned something else: people’s emotions were easy to read, and manipulate... This Miyamoto Nagato, the Zasshu, was just like him and that was the reason he was left alive.

“Did you choose to come here?” It seemed like they were speaking in tangent. “Was it your choice to hunt me down?”

“Of course it was.” Isamu spit, and he shouldn’t think about why a man like this would be asking him such questions, else he’ll get to doubting.

“Ah.” The Zasshu stammers to his feet. “I’m sorry for assuming then...”

“To assume I had no freedom of choice?” Isamu followed; standing up himself. Heart drummed and his hand still pulsed. “I’m a proud clansman!” He wasn’t anymore.

The Zasshu whistled for his horse; a grey, patchy looking one. His hand bled on the saddle as he mounted, but that animal didn’t seem to mind the pain it was emanating in the least.

“I wish you good luck in your endeavors, then.” The man clucked and turned his mount away.

And Isamu was a few steps away from being left alive and purposeless. He rushed to take his bow from his own saddle: shoot the man if he could even die. The Zasshu must have heard the bowstring tense because he turned to look at Isamu straight in the eyes.

“I can’t kill you, can I?” His voice must have trembled, doubt and anger alike. He can’t keep that bow strung for too long...

“I’m still human.” The Zasshu replies.

He lets it down.

“Why leave me alive then? Knowing that I want to kill you?”

The man’s hand still bled on the saddle, dripping onto the horse’s pale coat and onto the ground.

“If you really wanted me dead you would have tried harder.” Isamu drew in a sharp inhale, letting his lips purse. “What do you really want?”

He’s an easy man to read, isn’t he?... But truly, what did he want? To say he’s been at the mercy of everyone else his entire life wouldn’t be far from the truth, and perhaps all his youth has just been a struggle to preserve some sense of himself. And now everything was torn down, one final objective remaining: kill the Zasshu.

But there was no point in that was there...

His silence was noticed; the Zasshu speaks again: “If you’re still searching, I can help you search.”

Shoulders tense and his jaw clenches: “Why?” he can’t help but blurt and his arms twitch to put the bow up again. Was it because this man was looking to have his sight like every other person seemed to? Of course it was.

“Because you didn’t have the chance up to now.” The man lets his head fall slightly to the side, his long red hair cascading over his shoulder: he was still as strange and surreal as when Isamu first laid eyes on him, still threatening and reeking of grief making each breath he inhaled heavy, putting thoughts of dead beloved between his ribs, but somehow now he’s caught taste of the mystery this man carried. He was alluring, like some yokai that lived deep in the woods that you’d be better off avoiding. “And you are deserving of that chance. People like you and me don’t often get it.”

Definitely a yokai – that little shake of his head; the pain that still seeped into his hand and how the Zasshu seemed unbothered by it all, a gush of red slowly making its way to the ground through the horse’s hair. And like in all stories: monsters had to be avoided entirely or else you didn’t stand a chance against their spell; inevitably you will follow them.

Maybe that’s why this iele wasn’t a woman for him...

Isamu puts his bow away, propping it back onto the saddle where it was before and he finds himself mounting up.

“Doesn’t that hand bother you?” he can’t help asking.

And the Zasshu smiled, spurring his horse to a walk: “Would you want me to take care of it?”

Isamu only crooked his head and furrowed his eyebrows at that: “Humans don’t tolerate blood-loss well.”

The man puffs in amusement and bends to the side to search a saddlebag, from which he takes a rag to tie it tightly around his wound.

“People aren’t usually concerned with my humanity.” Miyamoto Nagato says, a thin smile still remaining on those lips; they were plump, sprouted from a thick, bushy beard that wasn’t cut in a long while. “Thank you.”

Isamu follows now, quietly behind the other as he led them out of the forest. The moment silence fell he remembered the river again; the sound of water still echoed in his ears as the drumming picked up again between his ribs. That was the night he lost all that he had left. The throbbing that invaded his hand matched this ache in his chest, reminding and at the same time distracting him from what transpired.

The city of Bukato slowly came into view, now that the forest started clearing; whatever situation he now found himself into almost didn’t matter.


	2. Child

How could he describe how enamored he was with the green of the hills, with how the drier grasses painted that scene with beige and how field flowers, that grew wild amongst that, swaying in their own rhythm in the wind, gave the meadows a life of its own. He was a child back then; all he understood was the unrelenting desire to take his body and hurl it into the grass, lay there, smelling the stingy freshness of it. He wouldn’t even mind the bugs or spiders that would crawl up his body – it made him feel like he belonged there, like any minute now he’d be part of them and just _be,_ small, insignificant, one among so many identical, but in that moment where he’s crawling up someone’s sandals like some pesky ant, he’d just be him, him being the sole occupant of that poor man’s attention.

The opportunity to give that man a rash to cause mild annoyance for the following days also entertained him greatly.

Isamu started to think of what insects got the worst bites: the bees?, the spiders?, the hornets? If only he was any of those and he flew into this room by accident as a breeze swept him by and he ended up pestering this monk that tried to teach them – his class was 8 boys, all belonging to the Fujiwara clan.

And the lessons they’ve been hardly paying attention to was the history of these Rūman lands and he’s having a feeling it has to do with something his father was trying to push.

He sat sometimes just thinking about why. His father was a bad man, at least back then as a child, but he’d never take back those words, only maybe nuance them further: Isamu’s father was one son of a bitch. So Isamu wondered what intentions he had then, plotting something maybe, learning history this way and hearing their clan’s name so often made it feel just off enough that he’d get suspicious. Sure, the Fujiwara used to be powerful and influential; their district held some of the larger estates in the city. Stubborn, proud people couldn’t be moved from their ancestral homes even as they laid half in disrepair, the families too old to hire or upkeep the property themselves as the children fled or married off to newer clans with better titles. The Fujiwara weren’t rich, not anymore – they once held the throne as Lord Voivode through Fujiwara Itsukage, about 150 years ago, but the man was assassinated and since then the Matsudaira rose to power.

Obviously, his father had no love for the Matsudaira, but kept a sweet enough tongue to maintain the relations; maybe that’s why they still had enough money.

Isamu wasn’t about to complain, though. The wealth of his family allowed him to indulge in little freedoms, that he couldn’t imagine possibly living without; the large house had plenty of places to hide, the orchard was vast enough to lose yourself in for a while, and the forest was perfect for slipping away and disappearing forever. Inside the house there’s only that many places to retreat into before his father learns where he is; limited and closed off. His own room felt like the most intimate he could be in there, but at the same time is the place most ripe for invasion: the walls were thin. On the other hand, if he was to sneak across the orchard, into the woods the world would be open beneath his toes: he could run, and give in to his weirdest thoughts, climbing up the trunks, laying down in the grass, sticking his feet in puddles and picking up the weird mushrooms and berries he found. _That_ , at all times, would have been freedom, but then he got scared: of going hungry and getting lonely, never seeing his brothers again.

Somehow, he feared death, even if there were times where he’d have wanted nothing more than to cease existing.

At least the way he was in this life. How could Isamu just put it into words, how can he explain the pit between his ribs, and the sadness that sometimes drowned his body. He didn’t want this. His father kept telling him he was born brighter because he said the colors were always pretty, because he said he could hear people coming from behind without fail, or wake from his sleep at the slightest of movements. He never slept well, at least not until he started thinking of the sounds around like some sort of music, trying to pace a rhythm out of it. And there was music in the garden; music in the forest. But not in the house. Oppressive, that was the word, and alone. His mother was almost never around; she didn’t like him. Maybe because his father praised him and like the boy, the woman had no love for the man. Or maybe she was just sickly, that’s what he heard the maiden say – there was always a maiden, helping out with house chores and cooking and raising the children. Their mother was buried in papers all day, or arguing with someone about details or people. Maybe Isamu would have grown attached to those maidens if his mother wouldn’t cast them away after a few years each. He knows some were taken to the bedroom.

At least the stable boys always stayed the same; they were two brothers, sons of the man helping out in the fields, his wife had a paralyzed leg, their daughter ran away. The boys cared for the horses, taught him all he knew about riding and would sometimes cover up for him when they knew he’d run off into the forest. Always the youngest one, Kōji; he was some years older than him but not really taller, with a really round face and round eyes. He was cute, if he left his hair a little longer, he could be mistaken for a girl – he liked that for some reason.

Kōji came looking for him in the peach tree one time, hollered at him to come down and Isamu let himself drop into his arms. Sure, he got caught – anyone around the estate knew precious Isamu could _never_ be harmed for those characteristics everyone kept calling special. And because he fell right into Kōji’s lap, he dared lunge his lips forward to the other’s. How old was he? He doesn’t remember, maybe nine or ten. Isamu never did that again. When once he’d seek the boy out to play with him, he’d instead refuge himself into the forest.

He’ll always, truly, return there: where the colors were so vibrant and the stutter and tremble of leaves in the wind made a music changing with the seasons and the weather. But there was always something else there too, something that took years to put into a proper sentence. There’s Old Gods in abandoned places such as these, those overrun by greenery where the sun shone at very specific angles. There was a message being sent: you are trespassing on sacred ground. Isamu was always careful to never act in malice or anger; curiosity seemed to be permitted, because in the end he’d be just like an animal, picking fruits and disturbing undergrowth. But then no one else came here, and he ended up sometimes wondering why. Maybe they were afraid came a thought instead of an explanation.

It's a pretty place for _him,_ what’s it to others, if his visage was so different? Was the green not that green, the sounds not a music, the puddles and mushrooms not inciting? Were people skeptical of a more muted palette, of an eerie screech or a rustle too powerful, or was it the things they didn’t understand? Maybe the wildlife? But there were no wolves in these forests, only deer, foxes, macaques and badgers; this time the monkeys wouldn’t even pester you like they would in the city. Well, there was rumor of some possible ghouls roaming around, which might just explain this reticence, but that didn’t feel like a threat to him, the keen eared, nimble footed tree-climber. Or maybe a child’s mind just couldn’t properly assess danger or comprehend the hypocrisy of believing there’s Gods governing these woods, but a ghoul would stretch the limits of imagination just a bit too much. In favor of his argument, though, he was pretty certain Gods existed ever since he found that deer that one time.

He slipped out of the house, through the orchard, straight into the woods and up the tree trunks. He must have been 11 at the time because by that point the trees had grown smooth and polished where he’d step to climb them.

That day he followed a troop of macaques through the treetops, not realizing just how deep in he had gotten. It was spring and the mothers had their babies; Isamu went to watch them play and groom, sitting there to wonder what would be if he was a monkey instead of a child – red faced, all covered in fur, begging for treats in Arujeshu and lounging in hot springs all throughout the winter-

And then the branch snapped when he shifted weight.

The troop spooked with a shout. Isamu fell.

Breath got forced out of him; bones rattled inside and the sound turned to a buzz in his ears. For a second, he felt like burning, then panic set in with the realization that he can’t be hurt, _he mustn’t- What would father say-_ Isamu tries to spring to his feet, a desperate effort to convince himself of his own health.

He staggers, only to fall back down on his bottom, dizzy. Then he stares ahead: a corpse stared back at him. Milky, cold, blue eyes, head crooked to an unnatural degree; a stag with one impressive rack of horns dangling from his skull. It wasn’t moving, not even breathing; it had to be dead. Why would his heart drum then, as if he was scared? He wasn’t scared. It was just the fall. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the animal. And his breathing got faster. Those eyes seemed to stare at him somehow; beyond the grave they wanted to speak-

Isamu shuffled backwards-

Next thing he knows he’s pulled to his feet by a pair of hands; he heard the footsteps but ignored them. Now, Isamu writhes away with all the strength he got, blood pumping in his ears. He twists around, escapes, stumbles to keep equilibrium, eyebrows knit together the entire while.

Before him a boy, about Kōji’s age, hands raised up in the air.

“You shouldn’t be in these woods.”

“Neither should you.” Isamu hissed, still out of breath, just trying and hide his fear.

The boy points to the dead deer: “See that? That’s a powerful creature right there-” Isamu zips his head back and forth, he could have sworn the animal moved...

“How did you know it was here?”

“I tracked it yesterday-”

“These woods belong to the Fujiwara.” Isamu scowled.

“Are you a Fujiwara, kid?” He felt vulnerable; he doesn’t reply, but the other boy just nods his head: “I am Lord Voivode’s son.” He then announced proudly.

Isamu blinks in disbelief, his mind now churning to find a suitable way to reply.

“No need to bow.” The boy chuckles; he had a cheerful, yet conceited air about himself. “Call me Shin.”

Imagawa Shin... Should he give his name in return?

“Isamu...” he replies, but only above a whisper, hoping he won’t be heard.

Somehow, he still felt the peering eyes of the deer boring into the back of his skull; he turns around again to look.

“I don’t think you should look, Isamu.”

Isamu pulls his chin up trying to match height with Shin’s eyes.

“Why am I not allowed to look?”

“It’s a spirit.”

“You shouldn’t look either then! Why did you follow it?”

Shin’s confidence seemed to crack right there.

“He was a friend... He was sick.”

Isamu lets his shoulders fall with a simple, exhaled: “Oh...”

“I befriending it at the Shrine following the Summer Festival.”

“How?”

“Food offerings, a friendly presence.” The boy moves closer to the corpse now. “I always felt he was kin with the Gods.” Isamu tries to follow his movements.

“I felt that too.” He says and Shin glances back at him. Those eyes; it connected now, it’s a powerful spirit. “It’s like it wants to talk with me.”

Shin remained quiet for a while; now the presence of the peering deer felt almost comforting. Was it trying to defend itself before? Preserve the body even if it wasn’t alive somehow? Isamu crooks his head to the side, wondering about why a spirit would care about the husk it left behind. Religion was confusing; all the festivals and shrines they went to seemed to be barely tied together; what they got taught at the temple had something to do with the ever-graceful, all-encompassing Zamochishisu, the God of the Rūman people. But there are other Gods; some he knew as the Old Ones, those for which you’d see the little shrines by the side of gardens and forests, or the porcelain figurines that gathered dust inside their house, and the others, smaller named Gods, mostly women, that took care of the soil and water and the weather. Isamu may not know the names of all these deities, but at least he knew they were all spirits in the end: for now trapped in human form, later to keep on existing as aspects of this world, just like those Goddesses, becoming the wind, the water or the earth. How that worked was yet another mystery he didn’t solve, for now at least. But as he’s looking at this deer, with its bristly fur and hooves almost too dainty to support its own weight, still feeling the sting of that cold, blue, dead gaze, he’s hoping the spirit is appeased – or at least not on its way to become wrathful.

“Shouldn’t we build a shrine?” The last thing Isamu wants is to see those eyes again, later, in the dark, knowing they’ll be hungry and vengeful and looking for him.

“Yeah.” Hopefully that’s what he came here to do.

But as they are, right now, they have no supplies. So they return later, maybe a day or two, having built a small torii to place right before the decomposing deer carcass. It smelled very different than what he thought it would – the musk had a certain sweetness to it. They brought food and incense, offerings to the new spirit, and a coin as payment – it was said leaving money at a shrine will bring good luck, but for the newly deceased, coins were given to pay to cross into the afterlife. Yet again religion confused him: a deer had no need for money if it was already a spirit, same goes for people.

But then if they’re all spirits, what would that say about him, his sight, or well, set of _abilities_ rather. Is that a way for it to manifest? To live? To express? That would be a beautiful gift to be bestowed on a living being, a human of all things. Why then did it feel more like a curse?

He visited that little shrine of theirs often now, bringing a stick of incense each time. A skeleton now remained, but it was indeed a friend: if he was to talk to it, it will surely understand and such silent council was more than enough. For once he felt protected.


End file.
